Star Lobbyist Closes Shop Amid F.B.I. Inquiry

WASHINGTON — For most of the last three decades, the lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti might have been mistaken for an owner of the Alpine, a wood-paneled Italian restaurant across the Potomac River from Washington where he routinely presided over boisterous tables of lawmakers and their staff members.

“Get me some oysters! Get me some steamed crabs! Get me a rack of lamb!” Mr. Magliocchetti would tell the cooks, strolling into the kitchen. “Every day a different thing,” the chef and owner Ermanno Tonizzo recalled fondly. “I don’t think he has ever seen the menu.”

That impresario act — pulling bottles from the private wine locker labeled “Mags” to entertain lawmakers at the clubby Capital Grille steakhouse, sending gift baskets or wine to lawmakers and their aides, or leasing each of his lobbyists a Lexus — helped Mr. Magliocchetti, a protégé of the powerful Representative John P. Murtha, build his lobbying firm into one of the 10 biggest in Washington.

Now, however, Mr. Magliocchetti’s generosity is coming to an abrupt halt: his firm, the PMA Group, is closing its doors next week, after reports that federal prosecutors had recently raided his office and his home.

And many on Capitol Hill, recalling the scandal that mushroomed around the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, are wondering who else will be ensnared in the investigation as prosecutors pore over the financial records and computer files of one of K Street’s most influential lobbyists, known both for the billions of dollars in earmarks he obtained for his clients and for his open hand toward those he sought to influence.

Former PMA staff members familiar with the inquiry say prosecutors’ initial questions have focused on the possibility that Mr. Magliocchetti used straw campaign contributors — a Florida sommelier and a golf club executive, for example, appear to have given large sums in coordination with PMA — as a front to funnel illegal donations to friendly lawmakers, a felony that could carry a minimum sentence of five years.

More alarming to lawmakers and aides, however, is that prosecutors may turn their attention to the dinners at the Alpine and Capital Grille or other gifts they might have accepted from Mr. Magliocchetti — potential violations of longstanding Congressional ethics rules that could lead to more serious bribery charges if linked to official acts.

“All the combustibles are here for a very salacious set of allegations that could go far beyond his campaign finance problems,” said Stanley Brand, a veteran Washington criminal defense lawyer known for representing Democrats.

A spokesman for Mr. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who is chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said the lawmaker had done nothing wrong and was not involved in the investigation.

Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for the firm and Mr. Magliocchetti, said it had “carefully complied with all Congressional gift rules and retained a top law firm for advice on compliance issues in this area.”

But three former PMA lobbyists said it was only two years ago, more than a decade after the House passed ethics rules restricting lawmakers and staff members, that Mr. Magliocchetti brought in the outside lawyers to train his staff in compliance; Congress had just imposed new criminal penalties on lobbyists who furnish unethical gifts or meals to public officials.

The ethics code bars lawmakers or staff members from accepting free meals or gifts worth more than $50 or a total of more than $100 over the course of a year.

And several former PMA lobbyists and former Congressional staff members, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation from lawmakers close to Mr. Magliocchetti, said that for decades he sought loopholes to shower food, drink and gifts on the members and staff members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee.

He regularly arranged food deliveries for late-working committee staff members, for example, taking advantage of an exception written into the fine print of the ethics code, the former PMA lobbyists and Congressional staff members said. And each year he hosted lawmakers and their staff members at a legendary Christmas party at the Alpine or, more recently, at the Army Navy golf club, that fit into a gift-rule exception for “widely attended events.”

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Mr. Magliocchetti helped pioneer the lucrative specialty of helping contractors lobby for military earmarks, the several billion dollars in pet spending items that members of the panel insert in annual spending bills, often with little oversight.

Mr. Magliocchetti came to know Mr. Murtha more than 20 years ago, working as a Navy budget analyst for the subcommittee during the Reagan boom in military budgets. Both grew up in Western Pennsylvania — Mr. Murtha in Johnstown, and Mr. Magliocchetti in Pittsburgh.

And when the aide left to start his lobbying firm in 1989, he helped Mr. Murtha recruit major military contractors to attend a new annual trade fair in Johnstown that became the cornerstone of the lawmaker’s effort to steer business to the area.

Mr. Magliocchetti set up shop at the busy intersection between political fund-raising and taxpayer spending, directing tens of millions of dollars in contributions to lawmakers while steering hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarked contracts back to his clients.

Since 1998, for example, employees of the firm and its clients have contributed more than $40 million to lawmakers, including more than $7.8 million to members on the House defense spending panel and $2.4 million to Mr. Murtha, its chairman. The same lawmakers, meanwhile, have helped finance hundreds of pet projects sought by PMA clients, including earmarks for more than $300 million in the military spending bill passed last year alone. And PMA, still owned by Mr. Magliocchetti until its collapse, grew into a K Street powerhouse with more than $15 million a year in lobbying fees.

Questionable contributions linked to PMA employees appear to be one subject of the federal investigation, which came to light with reports that teams of F.B.I. agents had searched Mr. Magliocchetti’s home and the offices of PMA in Northern Virginia in November. For example, lawmakers have reported more than $150,000 in tandem contributions over the last four years from the sommelier, John Pugliese, and the golf club marketing director, Jon Walker, both of whom live near Mr. Magliocchetti’s Florida vacation home and are sometimes listed as PMA employees. Campaign finance reports include another $1.5 million since 2000 from Mr. Magliocchetti’s family. And about $95,000 over the last three years was credited to Julie Giardina, a 30-year-old lobbyist who joined PMA after a stint as a Defense Department employee working for Mr. Murtha’s staff.

None of the reported donors returned repeated telephone calls.

Accepting such contributions, however, poses relatively little risk for lawmakers unless prosecutors can prove knowing complicity in the scheme, ethics lawyers say. Enjoying Mr. Magliocchetti’s personal hospitality, on the other hand, could bring an ethics rebuke or more serious accusations of favor-trading.

Friends and veteran military industry lobbyists say Mr. Magliocchetti acquired his taste for the high life as a Congressional staff member wined and dined by lobbyists in the era before strict ethics rules. In addition to his habit of ordering tables of food from the Alpine kitchen — a lobbyist would pick up the tab — Mr. Magliocchetti picked up a taste for gumbo on visits to shipbuilders around New Orleans, and a fondness for cowboy boots from former Representative Charlie Wilson of Texas (the “good-time Charlie” whose energetic nightlife was the subject of the recent film “Charlie Wilson’s War”).

The background of a December 2001 article in Vanity Fair about the social life of a young Congressional aide captured a snapshot of Mr. Magliocchetti in his element. Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, he and a PMA colleague, Daniel Cunningham, were hosting a rowdy table of lawmakers at dinner in a private room in the Capital Grille that included Representatives Mike Doyle, Tim Holden and Robert A. Brady of Pennsylvania; Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey; Representative Michael E. Capuano of Massachusetts; Representative John B. Larson of Connecticut; and former Representative John Baldacci of Maine, now governor. (Mr. Larson reportedly led the group in a sing-a-long of Beatles, Frank Sinatra and Rolling Stones songs.) All were members of an informal group that followed Mr. Murtha’s lead. Asked recently about the night, representatives of the lawmakers declined to comment..

After reports three years ago that Mr. Murtha was often seen emerging from a car driven by PMA’s Mr. Cunningham, a former military officer close to Mr. Murtha, a firm spokesman said the lobbyist was merely a friend who might occasionally give the chairman a lift. Days later, Mr. Murtha’s campaign reimbursed Mr. Cunningham $504 for “travel.” Mr. Cunningham did not return phone calls.

Mr. Murtha has apparently developed his own affection for Mr. Magliocchetti’s favorite restaurant, as well. Last year, for the first time, Mr. Murtha reported two campaign expenditures for meals at the Alpine, with a total cost of $848. A spokesman for Mr. Murtha said one of the meals appeared to be a “team meeting” with a group of former military officials Mr. Murtha likes to consult. (The spokesman declined to say whether Mr. Cunningham was among them.)

Mr. Magliocchetti, meanwhile, had been poised to exit the lobbying business. He and his wife were starting a new business near their vacation home on Florida’s Amelia Island. Incorporated as Firenze Partners, it was intended to be an Italian restaurant.

Correction: March 31, 2009

A picture on Monday with the continuation of an article about Paul Magliocchetti, a Washington lobbyist whose firm is closing after reports that federal prosecutors raided his office and his home, was published in error. The photograph showed Paul A. Magliocchetti, a lawyer in Haverhill, Mass., who is not connected to the lobbying firm and is not being investigated by federal prosecutors.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Star Lobbyist Closes Shop Amid F.B.I. Inquiry. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe